Antinuclear

“It’s gone downhill. No one basically trusts anybody, no one respects each other anymore. That’s how bad it is here.”  Traditional owner 

Kakadu is one of the great natural wonders of the world. The stunning landscape, teeming with wildlife, is a major tourist destination with scores of Instagram friendly sites.   For tourism operators it is an iconic symbol of what Australia has to offer.

“It’s one of the most special places in Australia. It’s for so long been one of the reasons why people visit Australia and for Australians, one of their must do life experiences.”  Tourism industry representative  

Despite its beauty, there is trouble inside Australia’s biggest national park. This World Heritage listed site is in crisis.

“It’s an absolute mess because the institutions responsible for fixing it up aren’t doing their job.”  Traditional owner

On Monday Four Corners investigates accusations of mismanagement and neglect which have fuelled a bitter dispute between the park’s traditional owners and the authority that runs the park.

Things are a bit tense here…It seems like it’s being run from far and beyond, meaning Canberra. We need people on the ground, at the grassroots level, dealing, talking with our people.”  Senior cultural tour guide

Key locations are in a state of disrepair, others are inaccessible and local community members are furious.  Tourism operators hoping to cash in on a domestic tourism boom after a horror 2020 say action needs to be taken now.

“We believe it can be fixed. We believe we have no choice but to fix it. Kakadu deserves more.” Tourism industry representative

The stakes couldn’t be higher for the local Indigenous community. Royalty payments that have flowed from the controversial Ranger uranium mine are ending.

After 40 years of production, the mine has shut down and there are massive plans to transform the former mining town of Jabiru into a tourism hub. Hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money have been committed to redevelop the town, but some are asking if this will be money well spent.

“I would not be putting all my eggs in the tourism basket, I can tell you that. A lot more effort needs to be put into the health of our people, the education of our people, employment of our people…Tourism is not the be all and end all.”  Senior community member

Traditional owners are speaking out about their frustrations and they want all of Australia to hear them.

“I really truly believe that this has got to be the turning point… if we don’t sit at the table very soon, things will be taken into our own hands.”  Senior cultural tour guide

Crisis in Kakadu,  can be seen on , ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.

………….ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: Traditional owners were given land rights in return for their support for the Ranger mine, and Kakadu National Park was born.

JOHN CHRISTOPHERSEN, SENIOR COMMUNITY MEMBER: They were told, the negotiators, you will have land rights. But what will happen is Kakadu will become a national park, World Heritage, jointly managed with the Commonwealth government, and you will have uranium mines.

JUSTIN O’BRIEN, CEO, GUNDJEIHMI ABORIGINAL CORPORATION: The park was part of the package. We know now that the cabinet submissions show us, the cabinet papers from 1978, that the park, the salve so to speak, was withheld until they’d secured agreement for the mine. The two go hand in hand. This was a major deal in Australian history. But the park was the thing that was part of the social contract that was to make it all better. They signed the same agreements on the same day, on the 3rd of November 1978.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: Now, after 40 years, the mine is done.  Processing of uranium ore at Ranger finished last month. The mine site will be rehabilitated by Rio Tinto subsidiary ERA over five years, and then the land will finally be returned to the traditional owners… the question is, in what state?

PROFESSOR KINGSLEY DIXON, ECOLOGICAL REHABILITATION EXPERT, CURTIN UNIVERSITY: The biggest issue that the mine faces now is that it is sitting in Kakadu National Park. There is both a regulatory and a cultural perception from the Indigenous people that it will be restored to the same values, to the same quality, with the same diversity as Kakadu. And at this stage that represents some significant technological and scientific impediments and problems that we need to overcome.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: ERA has promised to leave the site in a state that is “similar” to its World Heritage-listed surrounds. It’s a massive job. Professor Kingsley Dixon is advising on the rehabilitation of the Ranger mine.

PROFESSOR KINGSLEY DIXON, ECOLOGICAL REHABILITATION EXPERT, CURTIN UNIVERSITY: If we’re unable to put back those complete landscapes and the species diversity, including the culturally significant species that the Indigenous communities want to see in those sites, which have been on their landscape for tens of thousands of years, we could find the site an eroding heap of substandard scrub.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: As part of cleaning up the mine site, contaminated buildings and equipment will be buried in one of the mine’s enormous pits.

We’ve been told that burying the equipment and the contaminated material in the mine site is out of step with global best practice in the mining industry. Is this true and why isn’t ERA following global best practice?

PAUL ARNOLD, CEO, ENERGY RESOURCES AUSTRALIA: We have, with the support and input from our stakeholders, regulators, undertaken a very detailed assessment of how best to rehabilitate the site given that we’re situated and surrounded by a national park, and have assessed that the most prudent way to manage that mine infrastructure is to store it within the mined-out pit at pit three. That has the endorsement of the supervising scientists and other, uh, stakeholders and supported by our own scientific analysis.

PROFESSOR KINGSLEY DIXON, ECOLOGICAL REHABILITATION EXPERT, CURTIN: To bury your infrastructure onsite is out of step with what I think is global best practise in the mining industry. Mining industries around the world remove their infrastructure and reinstate the natural ecology over those sites. So deep burial is on the cards, I would find that surprising and certainly something that the ERA should probably re-examine.    …………

MAY NANGO, TRADITIONAL OWNER (speaking in Kunwinjku): They should look after the land. They should communicate with us what’s happening so we will know if any contaminated water appears. We need to know because we go hunting near here, where we live, on the creek. We go fishing nearby and walking there.

DJAYKUK DJANDJOMERR, TRADITIONAL OWNER: You got some people that monitoring that area. I hope, I hope they do really best things for Bininj people. Because, you know, the mine is, we know it’s close. As we said, you know, we just want [them to be] really, really, really careful, for people downstream.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: There’s not a lot of faith in ERA’s parent company, Rio Tinto, which blew up the 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage sites at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara in May last year.    ……

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: The town of Jabiru was built to service the mine but 40 years on, it’s worn out.  Now the streets are emptying by the week.  As the town contracts from more than 1000 people as mine workers and their families leave, Jabiru must reinvent itself to survive.      …………….. https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/kakadu-in-crisis/13180512